A multi-compartment, electronic pillbox is already known from the French patent 2,650,426, wherein a substantially large case comprises several drawers and electronic circuitry with a timing program for controlling the taking of medications by triggering an alarm to signal a patient to press a button to open the drawers. This kind of device provides the information that the patient pushed the button for his medications. However, it has the drawback of bulk and does not signal which medications were taken. Furthermore, the electronic circuitry can be programmed only at the pillbox site. Such programming allows data input only in a consecutive manner, first entering the time, then the name of the medication (which is displayed on a screen) and the dosages.
European patent 0,298,627 discloses a pillbox having a given number of compartments, a programming clock and flagging by an indicator of the compartment from which the patient must take his medication. An enabling switch indicates that the medication was taken. Pushing the enabling switch causes storing of the time, date, and identity of medication taken. Programming is manual and requires a large number of steps by a pharmacist. While a bar-code reader can be present at the side of the device to enter certain data by read in, other data still must be entered manually. Also, this device sometimes implies that the patient pushed a button associated with a compartment holding medication to be taken, but it does not offer the assurance that a tablet or capsule was actually taken from the compartment.
French patent 2,599,252 discloses a portable indicator showing, on a screen, the number of medications, the dosages and the times when the patient is to take the medications. This device is portable and programmed by a personal computer connected to the portable device. However, the device of the '252 patent is not a pillbox and can not dispense pills or capsules at desired times, or detect if the pills or capsules have been dispensed.
French patent 2,692,689 discloses a medical-help procedure including a detachable data medium for loading an operational program into a medical device, such as dialysis equipment, sphygmomanometers, glucometers and weighing scales. The operational program checks the operation of the medical device.
European patent 0,554,137 discloses a pocket-type medication dispenser comprising a loader and an optical system for detecting movement of dispensed medication. However, this pocket dispenser is restricted to dispensing a single medication per loader and cannot be used to dispense several medications. Moreover, detection by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photocells mounted on the opposite sides relative to a path of the tablets and capsules requires two electric wires for each pill dispensing path to power the LED and the photocell. In this design, a pocket pillbox having six compartments that dispense different medications would require merely to detect medication transit, hooking up a dozen wires to six compartments.